multicast (was Re: Readiness for IPV6)

Tue Jul 9 19:08:26 UTC 2002

	I guess I'll toss in my two cents here.  I see this all as a weird
kind of catch-22 on how multicast would ever become viable.  
	To get multicast going, people have to convince their ISPs that
multicast is a good idea.  Now, the large businesses that provide the
content have done a decent job of getting the ISPs to support (at least
nominally) multicast.  
	The problem comes in at the content consumer level (dial, DSL etc).
To get these providers to support multicast, their users will probably have
to complain to them and convince them it's worth their while.  The majority
of users will not make this effort.  Why should they?  The only benefit they
get from multicast is if they run a LAN (not so unlikely) and have multiple
listeners for the same multicast stream (much less likely).  So, for most
consumers, there is no direct benefit for multicast.  Yes, if  consumers
where just a little more far sighted, the eventual cost savings multicast
would provide might be an incentive.  Then again, I think most consumers are
jaded enough to think that they'd never see the savings anyway, and the
content provider would just pocket the money (or at least I am).  <snip a
discussion of free market economics here>
	If multicast is ever to become viable, either there will have to be
a grass roots campaign for it from all the dsl/cable/dial up users (again,
not likely as they have no real motivation), or several large content
providers go to the dsl/cable/dial up providers and make a push for them to
enable multicast or else.


-Nate